Pirates GM Explains Why They Fired Derek Shelton
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PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Pirates fired manager Derek Shelton, who was in his sixth season with the franchise.
Shelton had a record of 306-440 with the Pirates, for a .410 winning percentage, the third worst among any manager with at least 700 games in charge.
Pittsburgh finished with the worst record during the 2020 season, the first under Shelton, which was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, at 19-41 overall. They also finished with back-to-back 100-loss seasons afterwards, 61-101 in 2021 and 62-100 in 2022.
Pirates general manager Ben Cherington spoke a press conference following the decision, saying that he was the one who led the way on firing Shelton, talking with both Pirates owner Bob Nutting and president Travis Williams.
“Ultimately, I made a recommendation to Bob [Nutting] and Travis [Williams] that we make this change," Cherington said. "Bob supported that recommendation and that all happened in the last, really over the course of yesterday and I met with Derek this morning.”
Cherington made the decision based on the poor finish from last season and the poor start to this season, as the Pirates sit 12-26 overall, third worst in the MLB and 10 games off from the Chicago Cubs in first place of the National League Central.
“There’s no one thing," Cherington said on why he fired Shelton. "We aren’t performing the way we need to. We’re not performing in a way that our fans deserve. We know we need to be better."
"I guess I looked at the end of last year, August, September and how April and the first few days of May played out. It just became clear that a change was necessary and that we were not in a position to wait any longer."
Pittsburgh had a record of 9-2 and 11-5 in April 2024, before falling below .500. They would get themselves back slightly above .500, 55-52 by July 30 and put themselves in contention for a Wild Card spot, but went 8-19 in August, with a 10-game losing streak, ending those chances.
Even with that poor end to the season, where they finished with a 76-86 record for the second straight campaign, Cherington wanted to bring back Shelton, as he saw that Shelton could have success.
The record this season and that collapse eventually forced Cherington's hand and he let Shelton go, replacing him with bench coach Don Kelly.
“I think back to last year and as of the beginning of August we believed that we were headed in a positive direction," Cherington said. "We believed that we were making progress. Not enough, not fast enough, but we believed that we were making progress and we thought there was evidence for that."
"Then we had a very difficult August and that led to a difficult end of the season last year, but as I looked back at that, I felt for most of 2024, we were seeing that progress and that we got punched in the face the past two months."
"We all were learning from that, we all learned from that and I believed at the time, we were capable of continuing the progress from July and that we could over time the difficult thing that happened in August and keep this thing going forward and I believed that Shelty had the will to do that and was going to continue to do all the work he needed to do to be a part of that and so that was the recommendation I made and what’s happened now is that we’ve now had a bit more than a month of difficult performance that adds on top of the difficult ending from 2024 and I think it’s the combination of those two things that brought us to today."
Dominic writes for Pittsburgh Pirates On SI, Pittsburgh Panthers Pn SI and also, Pittsburgh Steelers On SI. A Pittsburgh native, Dominic grew up watching Pittsburgh Sports and wrote for The Pitt News as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, covering Pitt Athletics. He would write for Pittsburgh Sports Now after college and has years of experience covering sports across Pittsburgh.